I'm not bad at minioning.

One advantage San Francisco has price-wise is that both the Oakland and San Jose airports are relatively reasonable alternatives (price difference anywhere between $10 and $50/ticket, depending where you look). I don't know SJ at all, but Oakland has a fairly cheap shuttle between the airport and BART, which will then get you within shouting distance of most anywhere else in the Bay Area (or at least connect you to other public transit to all the most anywhere BART itself doesn't go).

Another is that it has a goodly number of localistas available for tour-guiding and shuttling. And I hesitate to offer up anyone else's couch, but I'm fairly certain, barring freak happenstance, that Hec and I could host at least one Buffista if someone couldn't afford the hotel.

But I got no dog in this fight, myself. I'm totally happy to go to Seattle, or anywhere, really, assuming the financial demons don't eat us from our bottoms in 2006 the way they did this year.

I think one West Coast location will be as feasible (or unfeasible) as another for me, so I'm gonna be pretty good with whatever works for the most people logistics-wise. I would like to see the Bay Area or Seattle, having travelled to LA nearly every year since 1999, but surroundings take a definite backseat to company.

Seattle seems to be ridiculously expensive to fly to, based on my past experience of tentatively planning vacations.

This was the case with New Orleans as well.

Which contributed to why I couldn't go -- too 'spensive.

As far as dates go, I vote June. For purely selfish reasons. I'll be done with school for the semester and won't have to worry about studying/paper writing/etc.

I would be happy with either. I've never been to Seattle, and I have mad peeps in SF, even non Buffistas. I would probably spend a week out there.

I think we should consider the expense of flights and hotels together price-wise.

I think we should consider the expense of flights and hotels together price-wise.

This is not a terrible suggestion, but it's very difficult to really consider both costs together because every city will cost a different amount of money to fly to from all the other cities, Trudes. Unless we pick a city with no nearby buffistas at all, the cost for some is going to be zero, and for others, it's going to be Ginormous!-Prohibitively!Expensive.

Unless we pick a city with no nearby buffistas at all, the cost for some is going to be zero, and for others, it's going to be GinormousProhibitivelyExpensive.

That's why middle-of-the-country choices always seem like the best idea to me.

And before anyone speaks up to remind me that this year is the West Coast's turn, I'm aware of that. Yay, West Coast. Still, considering how few people were able to make it to this year's F2F (and I know that I'm not the only one who couldn't make it due to finances), my opinion is that making it in a more centralized location every year might not be such a bad idea.

Well, in the name of "some rough idea" we could do an orbitz combo search from a handful of scattered cities to our leading destinations.

As far as the nearby thing, well yeah that'll varry -- that's why we move it around.